Half of the dessert's rotten. || Scarian

Chapter 11: Is the more I feel like running.

It was the yelling that Mumbo couldn't get rid of. 

He could get rid of a lot of things- annoying roommates, a simple arrangement with other foster kids and they would all gladly change places. The ones who didn't care about getting in trouble, that is, because Mumbo never actually moved himself-- too scared of being yelled at. Being out of place. 

He could also get rid of not so good meals. Their cook was good, usually, but didn't work on weekends and the foster kids had to put their foot down and cook then. Sometimes it wasn't that bad, like that one tomato sauce that little girl did once, or that rice a group of three thirteen year olds managed to cook together. But if he wanted to get out of eating a meal, a simple 'I don't feel like eating' got him out of trouble. 

He could get rid of annoying social workers! Nod and smile, nod and smile. Few compliments about how Mumbo is the most polite kid in this house, and they would just leave him alone if he simply nodded and smiled. 

The yelling was what he couldn't get rid of. 

Not the yelling of the preteens playing together trying to grasp back their lost childhood, but more the cries of a girl in the bathroom as she hit her head against the floor. The yells of a boy with anger issues as he punches the walls. The threats of a girl holding a knife towards others. 

Mumbo knew they couldn't control it, being mentally ill practically came with being a foster kid in a group home, after all. But... 

Mumbo couldn't handle the yelling. 

The yelling took him back to when he was with his parents as they yelled out his name, called out as they were ready to rip his throat apart, when he didn't do anything, because Mumbo was a polite little kid and he did nothing to deserve this, and he was now hiding in the closet and he didn't know what to do as he heard the yells and the screams and the sound of the alarms because the neighbors had heard and called the cops again- 

..Yeah. Mumbo didn't like the yelling.

So when Mumbo came back to the group home an hour later than he was supposed to, because he had been too busy talking to Cub over glass work than watching the time on his watch, he had known to expect yelling. 

The neighbors saw him, most definitely. Both of them. The annoying one who wouldn't stop complaining and the one who would sometimes say hi as he passed by with Grian. 

He'd known to expect the yelling. 

It had been horrible. 

Mumbo didn't exactly mean for them to worry. He knew they would, of course, because they had hung up his fucking schedule on the wall and expected him to get here an hour before despite having sent a message. It had been horrible. 

That was why he didn't speak to Grian the next day. The man who had the guts to tell him that they could simply talk about it when no, they clearly couldn't, because Grian never fucking did. Why would he spill his heart out when his best friend wasn't willing to do the same? 

So Mumbo didn't talk to Grian after that. 

He doesn't know if Cub had noticed his mood that day, and he hopes to God that he didn't, because he might think it's his fault, that his parents are too overprotective and that he is a loser, because children of overprotective parents are losers, and therefore Cub will hate him, and he can't stand the thought of having no one by his side, 'cause clearly Grian and Scar weren't anymore, too focused in each other's business to care about him anymore.